Parents of 2 Homeless Girls Scalded to Death by Radiator File Suit

Image

In December 2016, a makeshift memorial was set up outside the building where the girls Ibanez and Scylee Vayoh Ambrose were killed by a malfunctioning radiator.CreditGregg Vigliotti for The New York Times

It is difficult, even now that a year has passed, for the parents of Ibanez and Scylee Vayoh not to dwell on their daughters’ deaths.

Ibanez, 2, and Scylee, 1, were scalded to death on Dec. 7 by radiator steam in a city-funded apartment for the homeless in the Bronx. A valve on the radiator in their bedroom had come off; Mayor Bill de Blasio called it a freak accident, and the authorities were never able to explain how the valve became separated from the radiator.

The parents have since filed a lawsuit charging that the city was negligent and failed to ensure safe conditions for families seeking shelter.

The lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court in the Bronx in September but not previously reported, blames the city for poor oversight of the apartments that it used to house the homeless, known as cluster-site apartments, a system of thousands of units that Mr. de Blasio has criticized as being rife with problems and has vowed to shut down.

The building on Hunts Point Avenue where the girls lived with their parents, Danielle McGuire and Pete Ambrose, is no longer used by the city to house homeless families, according to the Department of Homeless Services.

The lawsuit, filed by Robert J. Mongeluzzi, a lawyer for Ms. McGuire and Mr. Ambrose, also names the owner of the building, Moshe Piller, and the social services agency that administered homeless apartments in that building under contract with the city, Bushwick Economic Development Corporation, as defendants.

An amended complaint filed last month says that the girls “died horrific and agonizing deaths in their parents’ arms, while their parents tried to save them.”

It says that the couple “witnessed a scene that would torment any parents for the rest of their natural lives, finding their two loving and innocent daughters scalded, their bodies purple and skin peeling off while the two girls lay there barely holding onto their lives prior to succumbing to their injuries.”

The lawsuit says that the parents now live in Greenbush, Me., a town near Bangor. They had previously lived in Houlton, Me., near the Canadian border.

Wade McGuire, Ms. McGuire’s father, said in a telephone interview that his daughter and her husband were “still taking it awful hard.”

Image

A photo of Ibanez and Scylee Vayoh from their mother’s Facebook page.

“They’re thinking about having another kid but I don’t know how that’s going,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to become of it,” adding that he still thinks about the girls every day.

The court papers say that other tenants in the Bronx building had complained about problems with the radiators and that the city ignored warning signs and complaints about dangerous conditions in the building and at other cluster sites.

Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for the city’s Law Department, said that the city would respond to the complaint in court.

On her Facebook page, Ms. McGuire wrote about attending a vigil for the girls in New York City last week, on the anniversary of their deaths: “Its crazy its been a year since u girls were takin from us daddy n i miss u so much not a second goes by that u r not on our minds love u so so much ibanez and scylee-vayoh … thank u so much everyone for the beautiful vigil.”

Two internet fund-raising drives created after the girls’ deaths raised $25,556 for the couple, according to the pages on gofundme.com.

Social media posts by Ms. McGuire and Mr. Ambrose also detailed the couple’s struggles since the girls died.

In March, the couple took a cross-country car trip through Virginia and North Carolina, across the South to Texas and on to California, a trip that Ms. McGuire said was spurred by their daughters’ deaths.

“I cherish the time I had with those girls n I thank god everyday that he gave me them and I curse him everyday for takin them away!” Ms. McGuire wrote on Facebook during the trip.

“My husband and I are traveling around the United States with our guitars to raise money and start a nonprofit fund-raiser to change the shelters in Nyc and make them safe for families to live … I am going to sing my heart out and spread the story of how Nyc FAMILY shelter killed my baby girls,” she wrote.

It is not clear from the posts how much money they raised; Ms. McGuire, when reached by telephone, said she would follow the advice of her lawyers not to speak to reporters.

Ms. McGuire also used Facebook to ask for help to pay for gas to drive to and from New York for the recent vigil and complained about not having a winter coat.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Parents Sue In Deaths Of 2 Girls From Scalding. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe